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A Thought From Daniel J. Boorstin: Time

“When, in the course, clocks became common, people would think of time no longer as a flowing stream but as the accumulation of discrete measured moments. The sovereign time that governed daily lives would no longer be the sunlight’s smooth-flowing elastic cycles. Mechanized time would no longer flow. The tick-tock of the clock’s escapement would become the voice of time.

There are few greater revolutions in human experience than this movement from seasonal or “temporary” hour to the equal hour. Here was man’s declaration of independence from the sun, new proof of his mastery over himself and his surroundings. Only later would it be revealed that he had accomplished this mastery by putting himself under the dominion of a machine with imperious demands all its own.”-Boorstin, The Discoverers